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The relation between the priestly legislation and the Book of
Ezekiel, which has now been shown, gives direction and aim
to the following sketch, in which it is sought to exhibit the
individual phenomenon in its general connection.
IV.II.
IV.II.1. The setting apart from the rest of the people of an
entire tribe as holy, and the strongly accentuated distinction of
ranks within that tribe, presuppose a highly systematised separation
between sacred and profane, and an elaborate machinery connected
with cultus. In fact, according to the representation given in
the Priestly Code, the Israelites from the beginning were organised
as a hierocracy, the clergy being the skeleton, the high priest the
head, and the tabernacle the heart. But the suddenness with which
this full-grown hierocracy descended on the wilderness from the skies
is only matched by the suddenness with which it afterwards disappeared
in Canaan, leaving no trace behind it. In the time of the Judges,
priests and Levites, and the congregation of the children of Israel
assembled around them, have utterly vanished; there is hardly a
_people_ Israel,--only individual tribes which do not combine even
under the most pressing necessities, far less support at a common
expense a clerical _personnel_ numbering thousands of men, besides
their wives and families.
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